Our discerning judges have picked the 10 most creative entries and the lucky winners below can expect a digital download version of the Bastion OST very shortly. Although all 10 are winners, our favourite entry by far goes to Keenen who decided his own version of Bastion would begin with:

I used to be a Narrator, until I used a played-out meme to begin a story and was fired for professional misconduct.

The other lucky winners are:

Darren H.
Christine W.
Ian V.
Kniferazer
Jasmine P.
Sonadra L.
Basha
Fifi M.
Analogue Steve
Keenen

Check your emails for your download code!

This is Chatchat, the cat simulator.

You’ll roam the areas around a house in beautiful 8bit graphics, chasing mice and hanging out with other cats on the server. There does seem to be a basic scoring system and some hidden rooms to find, but that’s not really what Chatchat is about. It’s just about being a cat, man.

Go with it.

Check out the trailer below, or read on for my hilarious* experiences with the game so far.

*May be less than hilarious

Hero Academy is developed by Robot Entertainment, so it’s no surprise that it shares the same combination of stylized cartoon graphics and tactical game mechanics as their previous game Orcs Must Die! This time they’ve gone for the Free 2 Play business model, so you can pick the game up for zero dollars and then end up spending heaps of money buying new skins, teams and avatars. Trust me.

In Hero Academy you have two teams facing off against each other on a board, with each player taking turns to move their troops around the game board before handing control over to their opponent. You’ve got a bunch of units and upgrades to use on the bottom of the screen, and a set number of actions you can make each turn. You can choose between placing a new unit on the board, applying an upgrade item to an existing unit, or using the abilities of different units to attack, defend and heal other pieces on the board.

Each unit has something different to offer; Warriors can soak up damage to protect your units and knock enemy pieces around the board; Archers and Wizards provide some ranged fire-power, Healers keep everyone alive and the super-unit Ninjas teleport all over the place, slicing the enemy units into smithereens.

How you place these units is the key to victory or defeat, as certain spots on the board will increase the damage or defense of the unit standing on them. Knowing whether that enemy Wizard is in reach to blast 4 of your troops at once, or when to rush your Warrior deep into enemy lines so your Ninja can teleport to his position and carve your opponent’s squishy Healers into mush – these are the qualities of a great Hero Academy player.

One of my favourite elements of the game is the “rewind” option. Before submitting your turn, you can hit a button to undo all the moves you’ve made, which is a great way of trying out a few actions before deciding on the best play to make. Especially since the touch interface seems to be a bit sketchy when it comes to interpreting which square you meant to click on.

The ultimate objective of the game is to use your units to shatter both your opponent’s power crystals and his self-esteem in the process, the latter of which can be done with the traditional chat window or through the use of taunts. When you end a turn, you have the option of ending the turn with one of the 10 taunt items your account starts with. This makes your entire team mock your opponent in a variety of ways.

In one of the more unusual micro-transactions offered in Hero Academy, when you run out of taunts you can buy more for as little as $0.99 for 10 taunts or as much as $5.49 for 100. Personally I plan to spend my money on buying the optional Dark Elf team for $1.99, which includes a full set of new units to play with, rather than some more taunts or a fancy avatar icon.

If you’re looking for a new time-waster and/or a cool little tactical game to test your mettle against friends or random jerks on the internet, Hero Academy can fill that void. Unfortunately the game is only available through iTunes at the moment, with an Android version coming soon according to the game’s Facebook page.

Just go easy if you get a game against some guy called El_Funko, because I hear he’s been losing a lot and his self-esteem can’t take much more.

Thankfully Bioware know their fans, so they have flung a new co-op trailer out into the rabid pack of grasping nerd-hands and retreated into their solid gold castle from whence they came.

Feast upon the delicious goodness via Youtube below, or download the HD version of significantly increased deliciousness from 3FL. It’s the usual deal – 3FL downloads are quota free for iiNet, Westnet and Netspace customers because they’re so good looking.

What if Freelancer was released as an MMO? Why isn’t there a Jedi Knight game on the Wii? Why doesn’t someone re-make Command & Conquer: Renegade using the power of the Unreal Engine 3 and release it as a free download?

If you thought that last one sounded a bit too specific, then that’s because I’m a terrible writer and it was the best way I could think to announce that Renegade X: Black Dawn is now available to download and play as a free, standalone game.

Renegade X began as an Unreal Tournament 3 mod recreating the awesome gameplay from C&C: Renegade and has been in development since 2009. Renegade X sees the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod going at it with their usual arsenals; stealth tanks, Orca aircraft, Mammoth tanks, commando’s packed with C4 and gatling guns. Check out the trailer below to see the game in action.

You can grab the 3.9GB client install from 3FL entirely quota-free for iiNet, Westnet and Netspace customers.

Head over to the Renegade X website for more info.

We have 10 copies of Darren Korb’s epic soundtrack up for grabs and all you have to do is come up with one of the least boring entries we receive – easy!

Check out an impromptu acoustic performance by Darren and vocalist Ashley Barrett below to see what you could be nodding your head to on the train to work. Never heard of Bastion before? Shame on you. Go watch the trailer immediately.

To enter, all you need to do is send an email to contests@3fl.net.au from your iiNet, Westnet or Netspace email address and tell us (in 25 words or less) what the opening line from the narrator would be if you were the hero in Bastion. Please include your preferred name for when we announce the winners (whether that’s Brad or d00mie22 is up to you).

Be as creative as you want to be, because you’ll need to be one of our 10 favourites to score yourself a soundtrack!

Entries close at 12PM WST on Friday 3rd February 2012. Winners will be announced shortly after and notified via email.

Vessel is all about inventor M. Arkwright and his liquid-based Fluro machines. What starts as simple puzzles solved by water machinations soon turns into complex puzzles with lava, slime and all sorts of other liquid physics.

Check out the trailer below or read on for a more in-depth look at the game in the new videos promoting the game’s March 1 release on Steam.

The demo will include both single-player and co-op multiplayer (which unlocks on Feb 17) levels along with voice recognition using the Xbox Kinect. You’ll be able to shout commands like “Shotgun” to switch to a weapon or “LIARA MOVE YOU’RE IN MY WAY WHICH MAKES ME HATE YOU” to have Liara step aside. I’ve never considered buying a Kinect before, but being able to abuse my NPC characters for being useless could be a game-changer.

For PC players, Bioware have posted the minimum and recommended specs for the demo in a forum post on their website.

Check out the video below to see the Kinect voice commands in action, or download the HD version from 3FL entirely quota-free for iiNet, Westnet and Netspace customers.

Well, when it comes out in New Zealand since the game was refused classification in Australia because we still don’t have an R18+ classification. But hey, we get to check the demo out. So I guess that’s something.

Check out the new co-op trailer on Youtube below or download the full HD version from 3FL entirely quota-free for iiNet, Westnet and Netspace customers.

[Update] EA Australia have confirmed that the Syndicate co-op demo will not be available in Australia, only New Zealand. I wasn’t aware they bothered limiting specific Xbox Live/PSN titles to specific regions, other than whether it’s available for EU or NA (Australia and New Zealand both falls under EU). I guess we’ll find out later this month.

Woohoo, free stuff! Everyone loves free stuff!

Starhawk is the sequel to Warhawk, one of the first multiplayer PS3 shooters, known for its gyro-controlled Warhawk jets and combining solid team-based FPS gameplay with vehicles to really make the player feel like he’s in the middle of an epic battle.

The sequel kicks things up a notch by adding the ability to deploy buildings, defensive turrets and energy shields on the fly in the middle of a game and adding the ability to transform the jets into a rad looking mech while singing Robot Rock (at least that’s what I’ll be doing). It’s the sort of ambitious design for an online shooter that makes me wonder whether it’s going to actually work well outside the controlled environment of the developer’s studio.

However the video below has a lot of resounding endorsements, so it sounds like the new stuff really works. It even includes a few people who don’t have to big the game up just because they write for Playstation Magazine, so it’s probably reliable.

Besides, the game just looks like it would be a lot of fun. Check it out.